Man has to Live in Yes

[A sannyasin says: I feel very good since the Primal group. I feel aware of my feminine part somehow.]

That's very good. Ordinarily we go on repressing one part of the being because we are taught to be males or to be females. No society allows that man is bi-sexual, that he is both; that man is not a fixed identity, not somehow static, but a dynamic process. So sometimes you are more a female, less a male. Sometimes you are more a male, less a female.

Male and female are just emphases. They are not fixed things. While you are loving, feeling soft, sensitive, and surrendering to some experience, you are more of a female. When you are frightened, angry, aggressive, not letting go, you are more a male. And the same is true for women.

So always remember to never get fixed. Allow... whatsoever happens is good. And always remember that you are continuously changing, river-like, flowing. In the morning you may be a male. By the evening you may become a female. But ordinarily the society does not allow this, so when your energy is becoming female then too, you go on insisting that you are male. That creates a contradiction. The energy is becoming soft and you go on pretending that you are a male. That creates a bifurcation in your energies. Then you are not moving with the thing that is happening; you are holding yourself back. By and by you become more and more confused. You don't know who you are because you don't listen to the process of life. You have some fixed ideas and you impose them on life.

Always listen to life itself - and life is continuously changing. It is good that everything goes on changing, otherwise you will be dead.

It is a very good indication that you are feeling the female arising. Allow it. Your mind will tend to repress it again. But just by and by forget that you are a man or a woman. Remember that there are a few moments when you are more of a woman. These are both your polarities and you swing from one to another. Enjoy this swing, mm? That will keep you more flexible and more alive, more perceptive, sensitive.

[A sannyasin, an air-hostess, said that she had recently moved from her large penthouse to a small room, which felt much more comfortable and peaceful.]

That's very good. It seems that many times we go on carrying many things which are useless, and we never think why we are carrying them. They can become almost a crushing weight.

Needs are very few and a man who understands what is needful will always be happy and blissful.

Desires are many, needs are few. Needs can be fulfilled; desires, never. A desire is a need gone crazy. It is impossible to fulfill it. The more you try to fulfill it, the more it goes on asking, asking, asking.

There is a sufi story that when Alexander died and he reached heaven, he was carrying all his weight - his whole kingdom, gold, diamonds - of course not in reality, but in an idea. Ideas have as much weight; in fact an idea is the real weight. He was burdened too much by being Alexander.

The gatekeeper started laughing and he said 'Why are you carrying so much of a burden?'

Alexander said 'What burden?' because really he was carrying nothing. Everything was in the head, but the head was very heavy.

The gatekeeper gave him a scale and put an eye on one side of the scale. He told Alexander to put all his weight, all his greatness, treasures, kingdom, on the other side of the scale. Alexander put all his kingdom, all his wealth, his victories, and everything there. That one eye still remained heavier than all his kingdom, so finding no other way, he himself jumped onto the scales, but still the one eye remained heavier.

He said to the gatekeeper, 'I cannot understand how such a small eye can be so weighty. What is it? Are you playing some trick, some magic with me?'

The gatekeeper said, 'This is a human eye. It represents human desire... the outgoing desire.'

'It cannot be fulfilled, howsoever great the kingdom and howsoever great your efforts. Even a single human eye full of desires cannot be fulfilled.'

Then Alexander said 'Then what is the way to fulfill it?'

The gatekeeper threw a little dust into the eye. The eye immediately blinked and lost all its weight.

It was immediately weightless.

The story is beautiful. A little dust of understanding has to be thrown into the eye of desire. The desire disappears and only needs remain, and they are not weighty. Needs are very few... needs are beautiful. Desires are ugly and they make monsters of men. They create mad people.

This has been a good insight for you. Remember it always, and always choose that which is more peaceful.

Once you start learning how to choose the peaceful, a small room is enough; a small quantity of food is enough; a few clothes are enough; one lover, a very ordinary man, can be enough of a lover.

But if you go on asking for more and more, then thousands of men are not enough. Even the most beautiful man is finished sooner or later. Your desire goes on and on. It knows no end... it stops nowhere.

[A sannyas couple were have problems in their relationship but decided they should remain together.

Osho said that they should be aware that love was not, and could not be, all roses, and that the decision to be together should be through pain as well as happiness.... ]

The decision to be together should be unconditional. It should not be only if you love me, if you are sweet to me, if you are this and that to me - no. It is to be together whatsoever - sometimes sweet and sometimes very salty; sometimes very beautiful and sometimes a monster.

Once you understand that, you have come to a mature love, otherwise love is only baby love. Small school children fall in love. They think in poetry and romance, and write poems and beautiful letters, but that's all childish.

They don't know what life is going to be. It is a hard struggle.

Because love is one of the most precious jewels, the struggle is very very hard. Only very few people achieve it.

Because of the decision to be together, don't avoid fights, otherwise you will start creating trouble for each other. Because of the decision, don't avoid fights. Fights are there - be true. Sometimes bursting in anger is very very beautiful. It cleanses many days' dirt and disperses many clouds.

Don't think that because we have decided to be together now, no more anger, no more conflict, no more fight. If you try that, your love relationship will be dead. You will be together but there will be no love. Then you will start feeling afraid of each other and you will avoid any situation. The commitment will not be very deep then.

Because you have decided to be together, fear is no more there. Now you can be true and authentic to each other, mm? Good!

[The Aum marathon is a five-day group based on the techniques used in the West in therapeutic communities for former drug-takers. Formerly it comprised forty-eight hours of working on negativity but recently has been restructured so that it is a negativity marathon followed by a positivity workshop.]

The Aum marathon is an energy experiment to bring up your negative and positive, to help all sorts of energies to surface. For the first time you can face yourself as an energy system.

The first thing is to face all your problems, naked, and the Aum will help you to do this. It is almost hell because the whole basement has to be opened and all the nightmares brought to your consciousness, but it is a great discipline. After five days you will feel so relieved because once you have understood where your problem is, you have almost solved it in a way.

[The leader of the group said the first part of the negativity days were not working. We had done all we could and so the next day we simply sat - and it happened. It happened. And it was very beautiful.]

Good. Always remember that when you are trying too hard for something to happen, it may not happen. In fact your very effort creates a tension around you, around others. Your very effort to penetrate their barrier creates a defense in them and they resist.

But go on. You have to make all efforts, because if you don't, then the point will never come. That comes without effort, but only comes after you have made all effort. Suddenly a moment comes beyond which you cannot do anything; nothing is possible. All hope is lost (Vedant nods his head knowingly). Immediately in that moment, you relax. And when you relax, everybody else relaxes, because relaxation is contagious.

When there is no effort on your part, suddenly the other cannot resist any more; for what? with whom? The defense is left in mid-air; it has nothing to hold it there. It relapses... it falls and shatters - and then it happens. You have used exactly the right word. It is not something that you do, not something that is done by the group. It is something that suddenly happens in the group. It is something that is not personal; it is impersonal. It is an energy that possesses you. But it can possess you only when you are completely exhausted, when you are completely frustrated.

That is the meaning when Fritz Perls says that skilful frustration in the hands of the therapist is one of the greatest tools. By and by one becomes skilful in how to create that moment of absolute frustration; when one comes to a cul-de-sac, and there is no going beyond it, and suddenly all human effort has become impotent. You cannot do anything. In that very moment something starts happening for which you were hoping and trying.

This is what in Zen they call a mini satori. You were working for only three, four, five days and you felt such frustration that you thought 'Drop it. Let these people go. Nothing is happening and the method is not going to work. These people are wrong... this method is wrong. It is just futile.'

Just think of a zen monk alone in his cell for fifteen or eighteen or even twenty years working, and continuously frustrated... frustrated, frustrated; nothing but frustration. Then comes the moment after eighteen years of wasted effort... almost looks like eighteen lives. It almost looks timeless, as if he has been strug-gling for ever and for ever. And the wall remains there and nothing has happened. The whole life has gone into dust... gone to the dogs. He starts thinking to leave - enough is enough! And exact-ly in that moment the first satori happens.

Suddenly he is so full of light. Something penetrates his very core of being. He becomes illuminated.

The old is gone. The person who is struggling is no more. Then something new, absolutely discontinuous with the past, has happened. This they call the first satori.

In groups also, mini satoris happen. They are mini because the effort has not been very long. By and by, as people will be getting more and more into it. I will be creating bigger groups continuing for three months or six months or one year; just a group of twenty people working continuously for one year. They will come out completely changed. You will not be able to recognise their faces as being those of the same people who had gone into the group.

So, good. This has been a very beautiful experience of a mini satori. Whenever you feel that it has happened and you don't take any credit for it, it is something spiritual. If you take credit for it, again the ego has been strengthened through it.

Go on working and more and more will become possible. But do all you can do. Never relax before that point because then it will not happen. If you think that it happens when you don't do anything so one should just sit and not do anything, it won't happen. Make all efforts, and more intense so that it happens after the second day. If you put all your energy into the group and it puts all its energy into the effort, even one hour's effort can be so in-tense that it can happen. It depends on intensity.

But good... very good.

[The assistant leader says: One thing that kept coming up for me was the difficulty in pushing people.

I felt that that is my role - that I have to yell at people, I have to force them - and I often have the feeling that I 'm torturing people.]

Torture! Yell at them (laughter). That is your work - otherwise they may not be able to come to the exploding point.

You have to work like heat so that they come to a point where they evaporate; otherwise they will not.

Five days is a small time. They have to be cornered and forced and jumped at from every corner so their defences break down - and in a moment of sheer terror they drop their armours.

That is the whole life-long pattern. It is not easy to bring them out of their pattern because they have completely forgotten that they are separate from their pattern. They think they are their pattern so you have to hammer them. That is part of the process. It is therapeutic.

It is just like surgery. If a surgeon thinks. 'How can I cut this man's body? Am I a butcher?' then he will not be able to do the surgery. He has to be a butcher in deep compassion. He is not against the man; he is helping the man. He is trying to take out some illness, some disease, some tumour, cancer, which is going to kill the man, so he has to be hard. Even if he has to fight against the patient, he will fight and take the tumour out.

So don't think that you are being bad or being violent to them. You are simply a surgeon and you have to help them. Aum particularly, is a surgical group.

[The assistant group leader asks: I was just wondering whether it was right for me temperamentally, because now I can just scream at people but I don't feel good about it.]

No, you have some ideas that it is bad. Nothing is bad about it! It is just as if you have some idea that it is bad to cut anybody's body, and then you become a surgeon and your hand shakes and you cannot hold the knife. You feel guilty about whether to do it or not. It happens in India many times.

Many families in India are believers of non-violence, particularly one group, the Jains. They don't do any violence, any sort of violence. When they go to study medicine it becomes a trouble. You have to dissect a frog. It is impossible for a Jain to even think of it! So for many days there were no jain doctors... impossible. Only lately, recently, a few doctors have come from that community, but they also feel guilty. Many jain doctors have talked to me and they feel very guilty that they are creating a hell for themselves. It is just an attitude - that this is violence, a sin. They have not killed even ants, so how can they cut a human body? But this is just an attitude.

If you are really in deep compassion, then it is a question of saving the man. If you don't cut the tumour the man will die. If you cut the tumour the man will be saved. You cut the tumour out of compassion.

This whole work is out of compassion. You are not against these people. You are not inimical to them, so your yelling and your forcing is therapeutic. You need not get identified with it - do it as a game. It is a game for you because they have not done anything against you. By and by you have to learn how to yell without yelling and how to force them without forcing. It is just a game. On the surface you are forcing them and yelling, and inside you are completely cool and collected. You have to learn that, otherwise you will be in bad shape. I was watching the whole time, and except for Veeresh, all the people who were participating were in bad shape (a chuckle) because it is too heavy.

Laxmi (the secretary) reports to me again and again that when these people come out of the group they seem to have been on a trip to hell (much laughter). It is ghost-like, completely disintegrating.

Their senses are no more working.... But you have to learn.

I was waiting for the day that you would ask and then I would tell you that you have to learn. Next group yell, and at the same time remain quiet within. Then it will be a great meditation for you. Be angry, show anger, and at the same time remain cool inside. Then you will see the difference. You have learned something and you will come out of it more cool, more healthy, more collected.

[A group participant says: I enjoyed the negative part, but I held back my negativity sometimes because I felt something wrong in it.

I feel that all the time a lot of my energy goes into fighting people, competing with people.

I won't feel that I need love. I think that for me to love is weak. If people need my love, I refuse to give it. I continuously felt a resistance in my body.]

No, nothing is wrong in negativity, but if you are only negative then something is wrong. One should be balancing. Negativity is good but if you become completely negative, you will never enjoy life.

Then you can be angry but never loving. You can hate but never love. Your whole life will become negative-oriented. You will be depressed, fighting, complaining. Nothing is wrong in that - if it fulfills some positive role.

If anger can be used to serve love, it is beautiful. Nobody can live in negativity. You cannot make an abode out of the negative; nobody can live in a no. Man has to live in yes. No has to be used only to find yes.

For example somebody comes to you and would like to be your lover. If you go on saying no to everybody, whosoever comes, irrelevant of the fact of who has come and knocked at your door; if no has become your fixed answer and you have a plate saying 'no' on the door, then you will live in an empty negativity, suffering. It will be a hell.

'No' will have to be used but in the service of yes. You will have to say no to nine people so that you can remain available for the tenth. Those nine nos are serving the tenth yes. Then it is beautiful.

One cannot say yes to everybody, otherwise you will be lost; you will become fragmentary. One cannot say yes to every passerby; one has to choose.

One has to say yes to somebody with whom one feels a deep harmony, a synchronous relationship, a deep intimacy; with whom something starts flowing within you, with whom something resounds, vibrates in you... whose being strikes some note within your heart and becomes a song. For that you have to say no to many people because everybody is not a suitable partner.

You have to say no to stones because they are not food for you, but you are saying no only till the right food comes your way. Then you can say yes, and you can say it with a full heart. But remember man cannot live in the no. No is a means of attaining to a higher yes.

So negativity is good, but if you become simply negative, you are committing suicide. Then what is the point of living? Say a simple no to the whole life and jump into the river! What is the point of saying no, no, no, the whole life? Just say a big no and jump off the hill and be lost.

If you are living for some yes, then it is good. Then many times you will have to say no, but then your no is no more negative; it is serving some positivity. Even destruction can become part of the creative process... has to become a part. If you are making a new house, you have to demolish the old.

One has continuously to demolish many things to create new things. Even while you are eating, you have to demolish the food. That's what you do when you are chewing; you destroy the food.

You destroy the whole structure of the food and then it becomes possible for your body to absorb it.

Then it becomes a creative vitality in your being.

Use destruction, negation, no, in the service of yes, creation. You felt good with the negative part because you have trained yourself for the negative, but you have to come to the positive part also.

[A visitor says: I am very interested in learning indian music. It is something that frightens me, but I feel that maybe I can battle with it.

When I'm really into it, it's beautiful, but the thought of making the music frightens me.

I've been playing the sitar for some months now and I began to feel that I'd rather have something smaller, and that my music would be better if people didn't see it.

Through this group I feel that maybe I have to bring it out more.]

Your feeling is exactly right... one has to come out and one has to learn how to share. There are a few things which grow only in sharing.

Music grows in sharing. If somebody is there, a sympathetic listener, then even just his presence helps you to go deep into your effort. If you are alone, it is almost like masturbation. If you are playing on the sitar alone, it is masturbatory. It cannot have that beauty and wholeness as when you are making love to someone. Of course the physical release will be there, but it will only be a release, not a fulfillment. The polar opposite is not there.

This is happening every moment. If you are playing the sitar with some people who are listening en rapport, it is almost like a male-female relationship; two lovers meeting. The player becomes the male and the listener becomes the female because the listener is receptivity and the player is the active part. Then a subtle love affair happens. The energy of the player and the energy of the listener meet and create a circle, and that circle is fulfilling.

You can learn music alone, but it has to be learned only to be played with people in relationship.

Don't try to shrink in a corner and hide. There is no need. Life is in relationship and with people.

There is no need to be lost in a mob, but there is no need to escape either. Remain available to people and available to your aloneness also. Let there be a rhythm: sometimes alone, sometimes with people.

Music is an activity of relationship. The energy goes to a very high peak. Your insight has been good... this group has done something deep in you. And start learning music.

It is scarey in a way, because music is such a great commitment that one life is not enough for it.

Indian music particularly, is a great commitment. It knows only the beginning - it doesn't know the end. Nobody has ever come to the end of it. People have simply started and gone on and on....

So it is scarey, death-like, and one becomes lost in it more and more. It is not an ego trip. That is the difference between indian music and the modern music. Modern music is very much of the ego.

The musician, the player, is just enjoying his ego.

Indian music is totally different. One has to annihilate oneself completely so that one becomes just an instrument in the hands of God and He plays. You become just a passage, a vehicle, a hollow bamboo flute.

[About the music group Osho has said that the music group provides, like the growth groups and the milieu of the ashram, an opportunity for the individual ego to drop and merge with a group consciousness... ]

Once you know how to dissolve yourself, once you are not there, you will simply be surprised, mystified, amazed, that somehow the whole group is moving spontaneously.

Then you will feel an expansion of consciousness because you are not there as an individual.

You have joined together with a collectivity. No more islands... everybody has melted. And then the whole thing becomes intuitive. You are joined by a telepathic chord which surrounds you like a climate, touches you all, plays on your hearts, together. That climate takes over and you are possessed.